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Stepfather loses bid to appeal against sex abuse sentence

Mark Russell

A father of two who had been abusing his stepdaughter for five years was watching a documentary about a man jailed for molesting his daughter when he told the girl’s mother he needed to protect himself from false sexual abuse claims, a court has heard.

The Court of Appeal’s president, Justice Chris Maxwell, and Justices Marcia Neave and Emilios Kyrou said the man had turned to the girl’s mother and said: ''Step-kids go funny; if a relationship breaks up, they accuse a step-parent of sexually abusing them.''

The girl’s mother remembered being a bit shocked by the comment, ''because I don’t know why he would have said that''.

Six months later, the girl burst into tears when living with her grandmother and told her about the long-term abuse.

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The man was convicted by a County Court jury of four counts of incest, two counts of an indecent act with a child under 16, and one count of attempted incest. He was jailed for eight years with a non-parole period of six.

The appeal judges on Monday refused the man’s application for leave to appeal against his conviction, finding there had been no miscarriage of justice.

Justice Maxwell said the man, who cannot be named, had been living with the girl’s mother since she was about three years old.

The girl was aged between 10 and 15 at the time of the sexual abuse, which took place when the girl’s mother was at work.

The defence contended there had been no sexual contact of any kind.

The girl made the sexual abuse allegations after the man had ordered her to move out of the house. She went to live with her grandmother but her mother continued to live with the man.

The defence claimed the girl made up the abuse allegations to break up her mother’s relationship with the man.

Justice Maxwell said it was part of the defence case that the man was a person of good character.

Character evidence had been called to show that the man was a decent, hard-working bloke, who was well respected in the community, and there had been ''no whiff of inappropriateness sexually about young children''.

But the judge said the girl’s mother was called to give evidence at the man’s trial and told how they had been watching a documentary on child sexual abuse about six months before her daughter revealed she had been abused.

The mother told the jury the man said to her: ''You have to be careful with stepchildren because they make accusations.''

The man told her stepchildren could ''cause a lot of problems'' by making accusations against a step-parent about ''touching inappropriately or things like that''.

In his police record of interview, the man described the girl as being ''very manipulative''.

''She’s a very smart little girl, and she can dress her mum down in about two seconds flat, let me tell you. That’s where I step in and that’s why [the girl] hates my guts, because I set boundaries, they’re there to stay, I won’t go back on them.''